Tony Fretton

Unit 02: Classicism, modernism and architecture in the present time

Somerset House (image: Google)

Unit brief

Classicism, modernism and architecture in the present time.

A project in three parts at Somerset House London

In the autumn semester, we will be working individually to design three interventions at Somerset House: one in a classical manner, another according to the ideas of modernism and a third in the manner of today, each with a given brief and location. At the same time, we will be researching in pairs in the areas of classicism and modernism.

In the spring semester, we explore technical and architectural detailing, and you will be adjusting your schemes and preparing your portfolios as an argument in images and text.

I will ask you to immerse yourself in classicism as a defined but supple style, and in what modernism and the other modernisms opened up, in order to make architecture in the present time that seeks to communicate with its audience and surroundings, and which creates a positive and optimistic situation from the facts of its program and situation.

Unit 07 will begin the year with an ambitious project, Timber Translations, re-imagining the industrial structures depicted in the photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher in timber allowing us to and explore languages of jointing, supporting and bridging in a single material at a large scale.

Unit 15 will redefine the terms of the self-build movement and transcend the trope of homes made by home makers, exploring instead self-build as a powerful economic and urban alternative to developer-driven housing.